Quintus Curtius

Journalist Raphael Rowe's new Netflix documentary series "Inside the World's Toughest Prisons" provides a harrowing look at incarceration in different countries. It also prompts a larger, deeper question. What philosophy is better: rehabilitation, or retribution? We look at the arguments for both sides.

In this podcast we discuss some life advice offered by the medieval Arabic political theorist and philosopher Ibn Zafar in his treatise, "Consolation of the Ruler Amid the Hostility of His Subjects."

In this podcast we answer some of the most common questions I've received about the G Manifesto.

"Who is he?"

"What does he do?"

"Is he really doing the things he says he's doing?"

We discuss some of the take-away lessons, and then go into some recent tweet readings.

In this podcast we talk about how the media deliberately tries to foment discord for its own self-serving purposes, and how this aligns with the purposes of the plutocracy. We compare this ethic to an interesting anecdote related by the Roman historian Priscus that occurred while he was traveling to the court of Attila the Hun in 448 A.D. Most people just want to be left alone to live their lives in peace, and this is the ideal we should seek in an era of perpetual outrage.

I read some of the recent tweets of the G Manifesto (Twitter: @MichaelPorfirio. It's all here: chimp strength, coconuts, weesh dudes, game meats, deep ocean swims, swooping mass beautiful girls, and the whole nine yards.

What the hell use is anything if you can't enjoy life? Unplug from those negative dorks out there and visualize some real fun.

In this podcast we discuss how fragile and perishable knowledge and learning can be. We discuss the loss of Latin literature in the West, and the dissipation of the holdings of the Alexandrian library of the Ptolemies. It is clear that even a short period of neglect can result in the loss of a catastrophic quantity of irreplaceable knowledge. Every generation must safeguard and promote the legacy of the past, so that future epochs are not deprived of their cultural inheritance. It only took about 200 years of neglect for the majority of Latin literature to become lost to history.  In the east, the great library of Alexandria, along with that of Pergamum, withered away from a combination of apathy, neglect, and the vicissitudes of time.  What lessons can be learned from these sobering facts?

In this podcast, I read a chapter from my 2015 book "Pantheon." The chapter is entitled "Ice Odyssey: Douglas Mawson's Race Against Death."

I didn't really know what to call this podcast.  It's a mix of a few different things.  I wanted to talk about the movies I reviewed in the last post here, but I also wanted to toss out an interesting comment made by Samuel Johnson on trade and pleasure.  And finally--to relax and unwind--I read a few recent tweets by the G Manifesto.  It's important in life to mix things up.  Idleness may be the Devil's servant, but so is monotony.

Men's clubs used to be places where like-minded individuals could congregate and discuss topics of mutual interest. As society has changed, this is becoming a rare tradition. To see just what a gentleman's club was like in London in 1783, we go to the original sources and read the club's by-laws. Nothing better illustrates how different that era was from today.

At what point does a man's dedication turn into obsession? And at what point can this obsession turn self-destructive? What role should judgment and restraint play in our lives? We discuss these issues, and offer the example of storm chaser Tim Samaras.